One of the issues we have in our dining room is that one of the previous building owners removed a relieving wall below the parlor.  As a result a portion of the floor has begun to sag about 2-1/2″ to 3″ over a 12′-0″ span which is typical in these old brownstones.  It is very noticeable when you walk across the floor.  Additionally a renovation was done back in the 60’s or 70’s and instead of shimming the floor they used about 3-1/2″ of concrete to level it along with 7″ of solid plaster furring on the walls to accommodate a 60″ tub in a room that was 67″ wide.

Needless to say when we demoed this area of the house and removed the concrete and plaster, the floors began to spring back into shape.  This room is currently a candidate for the biggest loser.  We also noticed that much of the plaster around the ceiling had begun to crack and split under the pressure as the floors moved back up. Oh well, you can’t think of everything.  Had I known this was going to be the case we would have removed a 1″ strip of plaster around the ceiling to prevent any damage to it to the delicate cove mouldings.

Unfortunately there is still a significant amount of sag in this area and we are going to remedy the remainder of deflection and sag with a triple LVL beam and jacking posts.  Its a relatively simple and easy fix if you know how to manage cracking plaster and which posts to buy.  While I don’t think we will ever get the floor back to zero sag, we can make the condition significantly better and keep the floor from deflecting any further. Yesterday the contractors built the beam that we are going to install today and hopefully next week we can begin to slowly jack the floor back into shape…

Disclaimer: Don’t try this without a trusty engineer.  You can do a lot of damaged quickly to a building and you certainly don’t want to lift it off the foundations…

Good news. We are definitely fans of Tri City Lumber. They acknowledged they had made a wrong and decided to make a right.  They came and exchanged all of the lumber they delivered without charging a restocking fee or delivery charge.  We have achieved the required modulus of elasticity needed for sistering the damaged joists in our building.  Rest assured our trusty engineer can sleep easier this evening with our new modulus of 2,000,000 psi vs. 1,800,000 psi.

The modulus of elasticity is important to understand when ordering lumber as it is a measure of the stiffness of an elastic isotropic material and is a quantity used to characterize materials. It is defined as the ratio of the stress along an axis over the strain along that axis. Blah, blah, blah…

The important factor to note for the non nerdy engineers out there is that the higher the section modulus, the stiffer the member is over a longer span.  While doug fir structural select would have been acceptable given the loading conditions and the span, it is difficult to find true structural select in lumber yards.  Often you are given something inferior.

Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) has the required section modulus that we need for our building and it is a product that uses multiple layers of thin wood assembled with adhesives. Sort of like plywood, you can see it in the image below.

It is typically used for headers, beams, rimboard, and edge-forming material.  LVL offers several advantages over typical milled lumber: Made in a factory under controlled specifications, it is stronger, straighter, and more uniform. Due to its composite nature, it is also much less likely than conventional lumber to warp, twist, bow, or shrink.  It is also easier for the trades to work with than 1/4″ plate steel which is what another engineer had suggested to us.  Regardless, we are happy that our engineer is happy and that it cost us nothing…

All in an effort to fix the heat and get some warmth in the house so that the framers could complete their work the following events have happened;

1. I have been to Kevin & Richards 3x in the last two days.
2. I have been to Home Depot 6x in the last two days.
3. I have been to Lowe’s 3x in the last two days.

Ugh…

I have to say that moving to the big city from the teeny village of St. Catharines, Ontario there are some truly amazing things here in New York. I have been to bars that have been opened 24 hours, I have had perogies at 3 am and gotten pharmaceuticals at some ungodly hour for something I had not expected. But what truly blew my mind today, was that after having been to Home Depot 5X in one day (my new record), I still needed some plumbing parts and they close on Sundays at 9:00 pm. This is where I met Kevin and Richards 24 hour plumbing supply. Simply genius…